


for though she cannot fly she is an excellent clamberer

by consumptive_sphinx



Category: Eternal Lies, Glowfic and Related Works
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Pre-Canon, Relationship Study, The Anti-Investigators, bird metaphors, evil disaster lesbians, fluff sort of maybe i think, strange and concerning love languages, traumatized people doing their best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:54:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29869452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: As a girl in South Dakota Joan had spent her summers trying to catch birds. She’d been good at it, too — the hummingbirds wouldn’t come near you but you could sometimes get a wren or a barn swallow if you were fast, and chickadees were fearless, would perch on your fingers and eat out of your hand if you held still. Would settle in your hand, sometimes, if you kept it up for long enough, and unlike the wrens they wouldn’t scare themselves to death doing it. Seventeen years later Joan still remembered the softness of feathers, the tiny fluttering heartbeat against her palm.She kept an ear out — couldn’t not — but in the quiet night there was only Inaaya’s heartbeat fast and light, her quick uneven breath, and the trembling too-slight weight of her on Joan’s chest. Through her shirt Joan could feel every rib.-Joan Kramer has more emotions about the newest addition to the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities than she has any idea what to do with.
Relationships: Inaaya Khadpo/Joan Kramer
Kudos: 9





	for though she cannot fly she is an excellent clamberer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wildwestwind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildwestwind/gifts).



When Joan Kramer met Inaaya Khadpo they’d been in New Delhi, following up on one of Mariam’s old contacts.

It was 1932, two years before Milo Kaufer was replaced by Louise Fauche, in the middle of March and as pleasant as the weather in Delhi ever got. Inaaya was barely sixteen and her shoes had holes and her hair was falling out of its braid in wisps, and she was carrying a bag full of books whose owners would never see them again and all the money she’d been able to save or steal.

Joan was carrying a handgun, and reaching for it before she realized the stranger was a kid. This didn’t actually stop her from going for the gun but it might if she were a different person have made her feel bad about it.

“My name is Inaaya Khadpo and I have psychic powers and I would like to join your team,” the kid said, all at once in a single breath like she’d rehearsed it, before either Joan or Mariam or Milo had a chance to say anything.

Mariam blinked. Joan blinked too. Milo, who prided himself on being impossible to surprise, didn’t. Inaaya Khadpo lifted her chin, like she was trying very hard to be brave. (Instead she just looked fragile. Fucking christ, had Joan ever been that small?)

“Prove it,” Mariam said, and Inaaya Khadpo smiled, sharp and pretty and the first indication that maybe she’d last more than a week in Bangkok, and proved it.

-

On the train back to Bangkok Inaaya sat by the window, with Joan next to her by the aisle, and pressed her cheek against the glass and stared outward. It was hard to tell when she fell asleep but she must have, because she kept startling awake whenever the train jolted and her head knocked against the window, until finally Joan reached over and pulled her closer so she was leaning the other way with her head on Joan’s shoulder and Joan’s arm around her waist.

Inaaya went stiff for a few moments, then slowly, deliberately relaxed and closed her eyes again. Mariam raised an eyebrow at Joan across the table.

Joan raised an eyebrow back, less effectually. Either Inaaya would learn how to move in cult circles more vicious than theirs or she’d be stabbed in the back — personally Joan would guess she had about four weeks to live, less if she didn’t figure out how to stop looking so goddamn breakable — but either way a few hours of sleep and half of a hug wasn’t going to make the difference.

 _“Ugh,”_ said Anchisa, and ignored them all, which she’d been doing already but she did it more pointedly now.

(They’d sit like this on every train after that, Inaaya by the window and Joan next to her in the aisle. Joan would say it was because she liked the space, and pretend not to notice that Inaaya was using her as a shield between herself and anything that could get to her; Inaaya would say it was because she liked the view, and pretend not to notice that if it came down to it Joan would leave her behind. Sometimes Inaaya would fall asleep on Joan; Joan did not as a rule fall asleep in public, and did not make exceptions to rules, but she did get used to the warmth and weight on her shoulder, the bend of Inaaya’s waist under her arm.)

-

Inaaya made it four weeks, and then several more, and then she was added to the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities “for the foreseeable future.” Joan’s prediction of her lifespan extended, but not by much.

Between Mariam’s joining the team and Inaaya’s they’d all slept in separate hotel rooms — Mariam, for reasons Joan didn’t care to guess at, wouldn’t let anyone see her in the mornings, Milo of course couldn’t room with any of the rest of them, and if Joan and Anchisa shared there might be a murder. But Inaaya was perfectly good company, unlike certain people who were going to get them all killed one of these days, so she and Joan shared next time the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities went traveling.

Which was how Joan found herself awake in the middle of the night, her hand already on her nearest gun before she’d had a chance to register why.

There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room — the window let in enough light to see that much by — no motion, no shadows that shouldn’t have been there. No footsteps.

Across the bed, a tiny half-choked sob.

“...Inaaya?”

“I’m sorry,” Inaaya whispered. “I didn’t mean to —”

Joan squeezed her eyes closed for a moment, reminded herself that Inaaya was not actually being loud at all by any reasonable measure, and did her best not to be annoyed. “You’re fine,” she said, “the guy we had before Mariam showed up used to scream. We dealt with it. C’mere.”

Inaaya blinked, twice, like she wasn’t sure she was right about what “come here” meant, and reached out slowly until they were touching, and left her hand still on Joan’s arm for two seconds, three, and then all at once Joan had her arms full of Inaaya.

As a girl in South Dakota Joan had spent her summers trying to catch birds. She’d been good at it, too — the hummingbirds wouldn’t come near you but you could sometimes get a wren or a barn swallow if you were fast, and chickadees were fearless, would perch on your fingers and eat out of your hand if you held still. Would settle in your hand, sometimes, if you kept it up for long enough, and unlike the wrens they wouldn’t scare themselves to death doing it. Seventeen years later Joan still remembered the softness of feathers, the tiny fluttering heartbeat against her palm.

She kept an ear out — couldn’t not — but in the quiet night there was only Inaaya’s heartbeat fast and light, her quick uneven breath, and the trembling too-slight weight of her on Joan’s chest. Through her shirt Joan could feel every rib.

“Go back to sleep, chickadee,” she said.

“I _am_ trying,” but after a few seconds Inaaya swallowed and started to deliberately match Joan’s breathing, and it didn’t take long after that for her to stop shaking, for the tenseness to fall out of her back, for her heart to quiet down, and for Joan to be left still awake with a gun by her side and a small precious weight in her arms and her nose in Inaaya’s hair.

 _Six months,_ Joan thought, _if I have anything to say about it you get six months._ The ridge of Inaaya’s spine jutted out under her hand. A black-capped chickadee weighed nine to fourteen grams; even at eight years old Joan could so easily have crushed the birds that had eaten off her fingers. _I can’t promise you a year, but I’ll fight for you to live another six months._

-

Milo Kaufer died in February of 1934.

Joan was good at her job. There had been very few deaths in the four years since she had joined the team. (Very few deaths of people she was protecting, that is; there had been plenty of deaths of other people. Joan was good at her job.) But Milo Kaufer died, nonetheless, in early February of 1934.

Joan was twenty-seven. Her youngest sister was about to get married; she would not be attending the wedding, she’d be reporting back to Savitree in Bangkok. And Milo Kaufer was dead, and she was alive.

It would have been stupid to be fucked up about it — it was a dangerous job, they were all living on borrowed time, and she had known that already — and so she wasn’t. She cleaned her guns fastidiously and kept to herself and didn’t cry.

But Inaaya was still seventeen, and knew where to go if she needed a hug, and it wasn’t to Mariam. She sat crosslegged on the bed with both her hands curled around a cup of tea she wasn’t drinking, and soaked up the silence.

“Apparently we’re telling Anchisa he was offered a tenured position at Cambridge,” Inaaya said, after she’d been sitting there for at least four solid minutes. “I don’t — I mean, I have to assume she’ll believe it, it isn’t as though she pays any attention, but.”

“But,” Joan agreed.

Neither of them especially wanted to talk about Anchisa. Inaaya stared blankly forward and continued to ignore her tea. “It’s... strange,” she tried again. “That the last thing I’m ever going to say to him has already been said and it’s just. Over. — I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

Inaaya just looked at her. “All right,” she said, finally, and then put the tea down and unfolded her legs and turned to lean on Joan’s side. “Do you want to do something else?”

Milo had been singlemindedly interested in geology, had reliably answered Inaaya’s floods of questions and otherwise had not been much for people. The last thing Inaaya had said to him had been to thank him for handing her a water bottle. Joan had known him for four years and had expected he’d die in the next eight months every minute of them. It would be stupid to be fucked up about it, at this point. “I said, I’m fine.”

“I know you are,” which was transparently a polite lie, “but maybe I’m not,” which wasn’t.

Her weight on Joan’s shoulder was by now long-familiar. Joan, on impulse, leaned around and kissed her.

Inaaya made a tiny surprised sound and reached up to hold onto Joan’s arms. Joan closed her eyes and the world fell away around them and there was only Inaaya, tiny breakable Inaaya whose bones Joan was keenly aware she could snap in half, Inaaya who had once managed to keep herself calm in a cave-in because panicking would only use up more air — chickadees could lower their body temperature by twenty-one degrees to conserve energy in winter — Inaaya’s hands were so hot it was nearly searing against the cold air, her breath came sharp and fast — Joan was not crying. She wrapped an arm around Inaaya’s waist and put a hand on her breastbone to feel her pulse and pulled her close and held her tight.

Inaaya kissed both her cheeks and then her mouth and down her neck and across her shoulder, let her hands fall at Joan’s hips with her fingertips under Joan’s shirt. Milo was dead and they were alive and Joan was not fucked up about it and Inaaya was warm and breathing in her lap and Joan could feel both their heartbeats racing.

They’d learned already how to touch each other, had been doing this for over a year — the first time had been back in Bangkok and Inaaya had known the word _vaginal penetration_ but not the word _cunt_ because she had gotten her words from second- and third-hand medical textbooks, and Joan had laughed and pinned her down and showed her all the ways she knew to take a girl apart at the seams and they’d be back in that bed in a month but it felt a world away — Inaaya curled her hand in Joan’s hair and pulled sharply.

“You,” she said, “are thinking too much. Stop that,” and she kissed Joan again, this time with teeth.

Inaaya’s mouth felt like a brand and her teeth were sharp where they closed on Joan’s lip and she was so light in Joan’s lap and her heart raced under Joan’s palm. Joan thought again of birds — “Okay, chickadee,” she whispered, or maybe she only thought it — and then she let Inaaya push her back into the bed and let Inaaya strip her down and let Inaaya take her apart, and didn’t think of anything at all.

-

It was February of 1934. It had been nearly two years since that day in New Delhi. Inaaya had grown: she would never be tall but she’d gained a few inches, had put on enough weight that she no longer looked so goddamn fragile, had filled out some of her sharp edges, had acquired curves. She still wasn’t soft, but you couldn’t see where her ribcage ended anymore; Joan could no longer carry her with one arm or break her with one hand.

Six months had passed more than three times over since Joan had let a sharp-boned bird of a girl fall asleep in her arms and promised her half a year. Milo Kaufer was dead, and Inaaya Khadpo was alive.

Joan took her victories with a sort of grim triumph, and did not revise her estimate of her own lifespan, but she did sleep easier with that small fluttering heartbeat by her side.

**Author's Note:**

> if any of my bird facts are wrong, please assume it is because this fic takes place in a universe with multiple great old ones; we don’t know that the subtle machinations of gol-goroth _wouldn’t_ influence bird behavior in this one particular region of the midwest. also, clean your bird feeders.


End file.
